In the next couple of days (May 5th and 6th, to be precise,) the Eta Aquarids meteor shower should be peaking – this is one of two meteor showers caused by debris from Comet Halley (the other being the Orionids in October.) However, Aquarius is the radiant and
Category: Nature
Running a little late
The rains mentioned in the previous post did indeed come, but many hours after they were predicted – about twelve after finding the mantids. We’d gotten a bare sprinkling in the morning, which wasn’t anywhere near enough, so I’d gone out to water all the plants. Later in the day, naturally, we got a thorough soaking, which is how it goes, isn’t it?
On the back porch,
They’re trying to avoid me
It’s almost 4 AM right now, and don’t ask me about my sleep schedule. But yesterday evening (as in, about seven hours ago,) I checked on the mantis egg sacs in the yard because I know they’re due – actually overdue, going by previous years. Nothing was happening then, so as I stepped out this morning at 3-ish I only glanced down at the nearest one in passing, since it sits
On this date 58
Yes, this topic has not died yet, but there’s a special reason for it to occur this time, and we’ll get to that. Right now, let’s see what was happening on this date in history. Pretty recent history, and nothing at all historical. Pretty self-centered, to be blunt. But it’s a blog, which as I’ve said before, is an exercise is thinly-veiled narcissism. If it’s
Some birds before retiring
I have a gout of bird photos taken recently, so I’ll throw them up quickly to round out the month. I’ll still be one shy of a post for every day in April, but so be it. Worse, I don’t have a podcast for the month either, but may make up for this shortly.
Also, remember when I mentioned
April must skedaddle
Nobody skedaddles anymore, do they? It’s becoming a lost art. Maybe I’ll start a school…
But it’s the end of the month, and you know what that means. No, not fresh underwear day – it’s the end of the month abstract, begun through a trivial coincidence and continued through sheer lack of originality and good sense. Today we have…
… to
I let my guard down…
… and of course someone snuck in.
In this case, it was the first of the mantis egg cases (oothecas) hatching. There are several in the yard, including four now that had been naturally placed there – three Chinese mantids and a Carolina. I was doing routine checks, but the last one discovered, deep under an untended thicket of mostly vines, I now realize that
Profiles of Nature 17
Wow, you’re still coming back? We should have defeated even the most die-hard masochists by now, but okay. Today we’re dropping in on Euphrosyne (six syllables,) who’s largely retired from the biz now. She started out just fine, pulling down gigs for Guns and Ammo and Elevator World magazines, and even a walk-on for an episode of BJ and the
It feels better to be shooting
The temperature is still bouncing up and down more than it should (said within earshot of Mother Nature,) but it’s quite nice to be able to go out and easily find something to photograph. Have I mentioned that winter sucks? I mean, where are all the protestors aiming to correct that?
A few days back now, The Girlfriend and I did a pass around the neighborhood pond, not in the best of conditions
A break in the numbers
This was going to be another of the ‘Just Because’ posts, but really, there’s too damn many numbered posts, so it’s not. And it’s a throw-up, just something that I came across today when watering the plants. Which looked almost exactly like this:
I had initially identified this as a black rat snake/eastern rat snake, but afterward as I looked at the